(OWLS Post) Key:TMI and I: Of Humanity and Friends

Hi everyone and welcome to this post. Thank you for making your way to my blog. My name is Scott and I run this little blog called Mechanical Anime Reviews. Right now, I’m having a small event on this blog called Mecha March. It means that most of my posts are focused on Mecha anime, but that’s not all I write about. I like watching and writing about a lot of newer anime and older anime of different genres as well. This post isn’t a good example of that, because I think that Key: The Metal Idol can almost be considered a mecha show. I’m not even focusing on that element today. In fact, I am breaking even more ground with this post. While I am most of the way through this show at this moment, I haven’t finished it yet. (I might have finished it by the time this post comes out though). Still, I have been inspired to write this post from many of the great personal takes that so many of our OWL members have been taken with this OWL’S Prompt. Before I continue, let’s talk more about OWLS.

OWLS Info

For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, what is OWLS you might ask. Well, that’s an easy question to answer. OWLS, also known as Otaku Warriors for Liberty and Self-Respect, is a group of otaku bloggers who promote the acceptance of all individuals. This is all regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religions, race, and disability. All about humanity for humanities sake. Each Month, our members are given a topic to write about and each of us approaches that through our own personal views. If you want to know more, please click here and look at the OWL’S Blog Page.

Prompt

This month’s prompt, inspired by the amazing Lita Kino and given to us by the equally great LynLynSays is called “Squad”. To be specific:

“Although some people may like to be alone at times, we all have that one special friend or a squad of friends who we kick it and have some good laughs and fun with. However, there are friendships that don’t last a lifetime and usually, they end due to a falling out or a misunderstanding. For this month’s topic, we will be exploring some of the best friendships in anime and pop culture as well as the friendships that ended suddenly. We will talk about what a true friendship means to us, what we learned about ourselves and others through broken friendships, and our definitions of a “good friend.””

Key: The Metal Idol

-Set Up:

Key is an ova series from the mid 90’s. It centers around a character named Tokiko Mima whose nickname is Key because she is a robot. Key has recently left her rural town for life in Tokyo. Before moving, Key’s Grandfather, a scientist who wanted to turn Key into a real girl, was assassinated by the mysterious Doctor Ajou. What Key’s grandfather left behind was a message telling her how she could turn into a human, which is making friends with thirty thousand souls. You see why she left her Rural town now right? Key thought she had a better chance of accomplishing this goal by going to an area with a higher populous. Thus Tokyo. Let the plot begin with all kinds of conspiracies, cool technology, religion, and all sorts of commentary toward what makes a human a human. It’s all really good stuff and worth your time to watch.

–More Key: The Metal Idol Backstory

Unlike almost all of my other OWLS posts, I don’t think I need a spoiler warning here. The main reason for that is I am not going to talk about the anime’s story, but Key’s backstory and some of Key’s interactions with people in Tokyo and her home town. All of that was covered in the first couple episodes of the show. Believe me, there is much more going on in this series then what I am going to talk about in this post.

~Tokiko Mima (Key)

As you would expect for a character that is a robot, Tokiko Mima has no emotions. She was so different from everyone else on every level imaginable. Because of that, everyone just ignored her existence except for the occasional joke here and there when she wasn’t in the room. She wasn’t bullied, just cast aside by the social life of her school as a whole. She was just there and that was all that was too it. The only person that ever interacted and could be called Key’s friend was some one named Sakura.

~Sakura

Sakura is Another person that was cast aside by the same school’s social structure. Even though Sakura and Key met through happenstance in Tokyo, there connection is more natural and makes sense to me. While she is an outcast because she hates the public, Sakura finds a connection to Key due to being cast to the way side with her. They are a small, but faithful group of friends that is long lasting. To me, that is the best sort of friendship.

Myself

~Backstory

I relate to Key more than a normal person would. I don’t think that I am autistic at all, which is the basis for people using connecting to androids and robots. Maybe I am on some level, but none of that has been tested and I am never going to say I am. No, my story starts with weird infections and having tubes in my ears at an earlier age. Believe me, the effects of having those tubes in my ears still affect me to this day. When I was in Preschool, I had massive ear infections. I couldn’t hear a thing, so I had tubes installed in my ears, was held back a year, and had my life changed forever.

Ever since that happened, I’ve always been the quiet one in the class room. I always was at the back of the classroom or a group of friends and was the one who spent more time listening then being involved in anything. Part of that was because I was I couldn’t speak very well, because I went to the school’s speech therapist during school hours. Other parts of that was because I was shy and because I was more interested in learning about what was going on then get involved in it. By listening to other people, my speech patterns improved greatly. There is hard evidence from my A.P. US History class that my rate of learning and growth was higher than any everyone else’s. That’s the positive of it all. I feel like there are more negatives to this though.

I always felt like a robot because of this behavior, because I never got fully involved in any group’s fun. Even in something like band where I spent 75% of my time in high school, I was always cast to the side and begrudgingly joined other people’s groups when going around any band competition areas. By most other people in high school, I was cast to the side because I never left a lasting effect on many other people. The result of this was I was only friends with a small group amount of people through my journey of primary school life. These people were usually the ones that weren’t overly popular and/or were cast aside by the majority of the school’s population as well. Can you see why I love and connect with this Key yet?

~Now

So how does this story end? Well, technically it doesn’t because I haven’t died yet. I also haven’t become and idol and/or made friends with 30,000 people either incase you were wondering. Still, things have gone mostly positive here. For one thing, some of the friends that I’ve made in high school are still my friends now. For another, I broke out of my mold a lot when I went for my Bachelor’s degree and made friends with a lot of people of different backgrounds. I’m still in contact with quite a few of them at this moment. Mostly through Facebook, though.

In recent times, I may have suffered some set backs due to some bad things that have happened in my life after acquiring my bachelor’s degree, some of which will be talked about on Friday, but I am finally back on course and have made a lot of friends through the anime blogosphere that I have joined along with activities I am involved in. This OWL’s group being an example of this. In some ways, maybe I have gotten my 30,000 friends to become human. Thank you everyone. All of you are great.

The biggest thing I’ve learned from this is that being friends with a smaller group of friends probably means that you will be friends for a longer amount of time and being popular is completely over rated. Slow and steady wins the race. It took me so long to understand all of this, but I’m glad I understand it now.

(All photos are found through google searches)

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Thank you for reading my post. If you are interested in reading more from OWLS, read Mel’s post from Monday and look forward to Crimson’s post on Friday. If you want to see more from this Month’s blog tour, please look at our schedule here.

They shouldn’t also you callin me a liar!!! It was a lovely post Scott. I switched countries a lot when i was a kid and I often couldn’t understand the language, accents or expressions. It made me retreat within myself. Today you wrote a post that made kid me less lonely. I’m not sure how to explain it but I think it may be magic.

That was one of my favorite articles you’ve written and that’s not just because you’re talking about one of the most underrated anime series ever. I could relate to some of your struggles since I had to prove myself to be worthy to everyone since people have told me I was stupid, worthless, and some have derogated me for being an ethnic minority. It was (and still is) a struggle, but I also ended up having supportive friends. The friendship dynamic between Key and Sakura was amazing. I’m glad you’re talking about that anime in that aspect. Major props, Scott.